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This year marks the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In a unanimous vote, the Supreme Court declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, which mandated that federal contractors “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”

Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, which prohibited discrimination based on those same attributes. Johnson amended the order in 1967 to include gender.

Today, affirmative action continues to be a heavily debated topic in higher education. The question of whether or not schools should adopt these policies when it comes to their admissions process is polarizing.

Sheryll Cashin, author of “Place, Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America,” spoke about these policies with Fusion’s Alicia Menendez. Cashin argued using place instead of race would be a better way of amending structural disadvantages.

Watch the full interview here:

Credit: Andrea Torres, Bianca Perez

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